In 1979 Elie Wiesel came to our college and in a moving story filled address declared, “In memory lies redemption.” This was his hope. He told us if we remembered what had happened to one people, we would remember never to be indifferent to the unjust pain and suffering of others. Years later he returned to speak at Augustana to state that he felt that he had failed, that despite all of his words, the killing and hatred had not stopped. He wondered aloud: if the memory of Auschwitz did not stop anti-semitism, what could stop it? He went on: “Can you imagine how naive we were in the 1950’s? We thought if we speak about what happened in those days the world would be shocked, awakened, never again to hate and kill. We were wrong.”
Throughout his life, Elie Wiesel tried to find the right words to stop the killing. I would say he was not completely successful but he also did not fail. Many of us who have read some his many books have been moved “never to be indifferent.” We heard him tell us, “Indifference is decadence. Indifference is death walking around. An indifferent person is already dead but he or she doesn’t know it yet.” We heard him exhorting us, “Don’t be indifferent. I don’t know what you can do but do something. Say a prayer, shed a tear, do what you can do.” And many of us have lived our lives in response to those words.
But, as the years went by, what saddened Elie Wiesel so terribly was that the killing did not and has not stopped. Seventy years after the Holocaust, what have we, as human beings, learned? It is now clear, if it has really been unclear, that we will not be able to fix that part of the human being that compels hatred and murder of the other. Elie Wiesel freely admitted his naiveté. And yet he did not give up. In over fifty books, articles, plays and talks, he kept on trying. At times he spoke about feeling it hopeless and helpless. To him that was no reason to stop trying. And he did try; he did do what he could to bear witness on behalf of those who no longer had a voice.
Along with the central theme of human indifference, he spoke about his disappointment in God. He would not and could not allow himself to let God off the hook. He could not understand how a caring God, covenanted to the Jewish people, could remain indifferent in the face of the mass killing of a million and a half Jewish children. He chided the biblical Job for not going far enough and persisting in his questioning of God. For Wiesel, his questions were a form of prayer. And he refused to stop praying his entire life.
Throughout his writings certain themes beyond indifference were usually emphasized. It was clear for Wiesel that to approach the Holocaust was to come close to madness. Not only could the Holocaust make you mad but even attempting to understand what happened could make you mad. And Wiesel asserted, only the mad could really comprehend what had happened. Madness was the opposite of sanity. And when someone approached what had happened in the Holocaust, Wiesel told us, it was like approaching a raging fire that could burn you and make you crazy. Beginning with mad Moishe in Night there continued to be characters throughout his writings who were mad and because they were mad could now try to communicate what they had seen. Auschwitz was so horrific, Wiesel thought that when God came close to see for himself he too became mad.
Why was madness such a prominent theme? For Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz was a another planet, a place where there were no moral limits, a place where if you could think of it, you could do it, a place that when you actually tried to look at what had happened there you would begin crying and not be able to stop, a place where even when God tried to come near, the place was so dark, God had to retreat, it was a massive insanity, and a place where there was no “warum?” no why? When one of Wiesel’s friends had the nourished the courage to ask one of guards at Auschwitz, why are you killing us? The guard answered in German “Hier gibt es kein warum.” “Here there is no why.”
If it was such a terrible horrible scene how could one find words to describe the indescribable? For Elie Wiesel, the words were insufficient, human language was unable to come close to the horror. Language could abstractly and objectively describe what happened there without actually coming close to the horror. The horror of Auschwitz is that it showed all of us what lie dormant in the soul of human beings. This is what we could do to each other if we were not careful and aware. This is what we could allow if we were not aware of the monstrous capacity inside ourselves and inside God. And this is precisely what made people go mad when they came too close. They were forced to face the horrific capacities that they themselves possessed. They were forced to face the silence and absence of God. What all this meant for Wiesel was that he had to wrestle with the insufficiency of language to communicate what he had seen and what had happened. He decided that there was only one way and that was to tell stories.
But he was aware that human beings have an amazing capacity to resist the truth about themselves. So he constantly strove to find language, words, stories that could break through this resistance. When a person is writing a story he or she must decide whether to use one word or another. Each word reveals and conceals at the same time. What story should be told and with what words should he tell the story? What could people hear and what would they refuse to hear? This was Elie Wiesel’s dilemma.
Wiesel talked about “Night” as that dark place where human beings and God should not let themselves go. This was the place of absence, the absence of humanity and absence of divinity. Elie Wiesel was unwilling to justify and excuse the behavior of either and he accused each of them of having been part of that “Night.” When Elie Wiesel was at Augustana his last time, he was asked whether he hoped the messiah would come in the morning. He answered that it was too late for messiahs. If God and the messiah were not moved by the death of a million and a half children, it was too late . As he said, “Let them stay where they are, it is too late.” And yet, at the conclusion of his talk, he asserted , recalling the words of Maimonides. “I believe in the coming of the messiah and though he tarry, I shall wait, I shall wait.” He was determined that people know that the “Night” lives within each of us and can rear its horrific head at any time, if we are not vigilant. The “Night” is real, it is evil, it is within our capacity. And God and messiahs will not stop the world from being a dangerous place.
I, personally, will miss his gentle haunting voice and his terribly moving stories. He was a mentor and a teacher for me. In so many ways my teaching life has been formed by his voice. I know I will keep reading his books and listening to his words but I will miss him very much.
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